Can you imagine the horror of the moment, handcuffed to a dude charged with shooting the President of the United States of America, and watching a known gunsel from Chicago, a man who broke in to his trade by running errands for the Al Capone organization in the shtetl near the open air Market at Halsted and Maxwell - this bulldog in a fedora - coming at you out of a nightmare on a horrible weekend in November, in stereo - with a gun?
Jim Leavelle finally told it like it is. He now says he saw the gun in Jacob Rubenstein's hand. He was holding it down by his side as they got off the elevator. As they started for the armored car that was to transport Lee Harvey Oswald from the basement of Dallas Police headquarters to the County Jail, Detective Leavelle now says, he saw the gun, watched, powerless, as Ruby raised it to waist level, leaned in for the kill, and gut shot this pathetic nebbish from New Orleans nicknamed Ozzie the Rabbit by his fellow Marines.
Here was a guy, Lee Harvey Oswald, O.H. Lee, Alec Osvaldovich - take your pick - who got arrested for fighting Cuban exiles after he tried to distribute "Fair Play For Cuba" leaflets on Canal Street, worked with Guy Bannister of the FBI and the old Chicago P.D. Red Squad out of his office on Camp Street, ran numbers for his Uncle Dutz Murrett out of a bar near City Park when he was growing up in the Ninth Ward, worked on radar sets used to track the CIA's U-2 flights, then defected to the Soviet Union and tried to renounce his citizenship at the American Embassy. Without discounting any of those peculiarities or unanswered questions, just imagine the horror, the sheer horror of the moment, its diamond hard intensity and sparkling lines of tension in an item of street theater played out against the wall in terms of big time con. What a play, and there was Jim Leavelle, homicide detective, who knew every player and half-assed character in the world's biggest small town - Big D - handcuffed to the man of the hour.
That's what I'm talking about. That's what I mean when I say I have the morals of a tomcat and the conscience of a rattlesnake when it comes to the art of the story, telling the story, getting the facts, putting together the story. Like golf, poker or Russian roulette, it's a very humbling pastime, especially for The Legendary.
Here was a guy, Lee Harvey Oswald, O.H. Lee, Alec Osvaldovich - take your pick - who got arrested for fighting Cuban exiles after he tried to distribute "Fair Play For Cuba" leaflets on Canal Street, worked with Guy Bannister of the FBI and the old Chicago P.D. Red Squad out of his office on Camp Street, ran numbers for his Uncle Dutz Murrett out of a bar near City Park when he was growing up in the Ninth Ward, worked on radar sets used to track the CIA's U-2 flights, then defected to the Soviet Union and tried to renounce his citizenship at the American Embassy. Without discounting any of those peculiarities or unanswered questions, just imagine the horror, the sheer horror of the moment, its diamond hard intensity and sparkling lines of tension in an item of street theater played out against the wall in terms of big time con. What a play, and there was Jim Leavelle, homicide detective, who knew every player and half-assed character in the world's biggest small town - Big D - handcuffed to the man of the hour.
That's what I'm talking about. That's what I mean when I say I have the morals of a tomcat and the conscience of a rattlesnake when it comes to the art of the story, telling the story, getting the facts, putting together the story. Like golf, poker or Russian roulette, it's a very humbling pastime, especially for The Legendary.
Detective Jim wasn't much of a bodyguard, was he?
ReplyDeleteYeah, where's his gun? Why no gun for the cop cuffed to LHO?
ReplyDelete